Girl At Heart Of Sperm-Swapping Scandal Asks: 'Who Am I?'

Published 9:25 am, Wednesday, January 15, 2014

To recap: A woman discovered through an at-home DNA test and some detective work that in 1991, a fertility clinic worker, since deceased, had swapped his own sperm for her husband's.

The clinic, called Reproductive Medical Technologies, was owned by a now-deceased University of Utah faculty member.

Though the University isn't officially associated with the now-closed clinic, they told us that they were offering free paternity testing to anyone who used the clinic while the worker, Thomas Ray Lippert, was employed there.

Since then more details have emerged about this sperm-swapping nightmare. Here is what we know now:

The mother involved has revealed herself as San Antonio resident Pamela Branum on CBS affiliate KUTV.

Annie Branum, Pamela Branum's 21-year-old daughter who recently learned she was conceived from Lippert's sperm, is trying to make sense of it all. "My dad is not my biological father," she told KUTV. "Who am I?"

Pamela Branum told The Salt Lake Tribune she isn't satisfied with the University's investigation, and thinks they have "been stonewalling this whole time." The University notes that because Lippert died in 1999 and the clinic's records were lost, they can't find any concrete answers. "We believe it is impossible to determine exactly what happened," a University spokeswoman told the AP.

A legal investigation seems unlikely. "State and federal prosecutors said they were unaware of the nearly year-old allegation and weren't certain it warranted an investigation," Foy added, noting that the FDA only started regulating fertility clinics years after RMT had shut down.